Publications

Much has been said about Blockchain and cryptocurrency, from the most optimistic views saying it represents the end of the middleman, to those who are more pessimistic and see the technology as a way to waste a lot of money (and electricity) on applications that could be much simpler and less costly. Blockchain is more…

The importance of encryption and its impact on the law and society is a subject that has gained projection in Brazil with the recent course of judicial actions in the Supreme Federal Court – STF. Both (ADI 5527 and ADPF 403) deal with the issue of the blockage of online applications like WhatsApp – instant…

The transformation between models of Brazilian public administration over the years shows, initially, how the public administration is a reflection of an economically dominant model and how public policies are thus oriented. The implantation of a bureaucratic model of public administration in the 1930s was marked by a growth of the State structure, administrative organization,…

Currently, the interfaces between international contracts, the transnationality of commercial relations and users’ rights have been increasingly significant. Consumer law and private international law, as areas of marked specificity and provided with their own languages, are gradually enclosing, with points of material and functional convergence. They are no longer admitted as merely watertight disciplines in…

The Westphalian model of nation-state based on territorial sovereignty has undergone changes with the expansion and use of the internet, which is based on decentralization, openness, collaboration and cross-border movements between countries. With two very different logics, relations between states and the internet have undergone constant changes, leading to a number of discussions in courts…

What is being a woman? What can we really do? To understand how these questions relate to internet governance and women, it is necessary to understand how social advances have grown, and which have allowed women to recognize themselves as a social being and active in government, without being often faced with abusive patterns. A…

When the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced on Tuesday an initiative for the development of autonomous weapons – warfare artifacts controlled not by humans, but by artificial intelligence – a group of more than 50 researchers in Artificial Intelligence reacted calling for a boycott. The group, made up of scientists from…

The beginning of 2018 has witnessed strong discussions on privacy and personal data protection in the US and Europe, mainly due to the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal, and the entry into force in May of the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In this sense, it was expected that the constant cases of…

If you have the habit of playing online, or know someone who does, there is a considerable chance you have heard of the so-called “loot boxes” – or “loot crates” – present in some games. The purpose of this text is to present an overview of this topic, explaining why loot boxes are such a…

On March 16, Facebook publicly announced that it was suspending the activities of SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) and Cambridge Analytica from Facebook. These same companies were pointed out by analysts as essential to Donald Trump’s victory in the last US presidential election and the Brexit movement in the UK. But what is behind this suspension…